ExternalIfc - Extending the Data Model - using Externals and Components

chucktvb

All,

I have extended my data model by creating a java class CarDetails that extends Content. In order to make CarDetails visible to LiveSite, I intend to use the CarExternal class to generate the response document and tie that to a CarDetails.component.

Here is the component's Content XML.

<Data>
<External>
<Object Scope="global">com.interwoven.livesite.model.external.CarExternal</Object>
<Method>testComponent</Method>
</External>
</Data>

This is a simple test just to confirm that I'm wiring everything together correctly. Unfortunately, I'm getting the following exception.

java.lang.RuntimeException: [com.interwoven.livesite.model.content.CarDetail] does not implement ExternalIfc
at com.interwoven.livesite.runtime.model.page.RuntimeComponent.getDataDOM22(RuntimeComponent.java:425)
at com.interwoven.livesite.runtime.model.component.Component.executeExternal(Component.java:305)
at com.interwoven.livesite.runtime.model.page.RuntimeComponent.transform(RuntimeComponent.java:233)
at com.interwoven.livesite.runtime.page.PageTokenComponent.preRender(PageTokenComponent.java:141)
at com.interwoven.livesite.runtime.page.PageTokenContainer.preRender(PageTokenContainer.java:313)
at com.interwoven.livesite.runtime.model.page.RuntimePage.transform(RuntimePage.java:343)
at com.interwoven.livesite.model.page.PreviewPage.transform(PreviewPage.java:226)

CarExternal does not implement the inferface ExternalIfc. None of the documentation indicates that it should, and ExternalIfc is deprecated. In addition, the return type of the ExternalIfc execute method is org.w3c.dom.Document while org.dom4j.Document is used throughout the documentation.

Should I be dealing with ExternalIfc at all? Does CarExternal really need to implement ExternalIfc or have I configured my component incorrectly?

NOTE: I have tried implementing ExternalIfc and was successful. I got past the above exception, but other issues have arisen. I just want to make sure I'm going down the right path before committing more time.

Chuck

Stokes

I've run into this before, and the answer was to set

Scope="local"

. In my case I didn't have any scope attribute defined and saw that puzzling message.

The answer I got was that the handling of

ExternalIfc

was there for backwards-compatibility in legacy components. A support issue was logged to fix the wording of the message in non-legacy situations like this, but that won't change until 3.1.

--Stokes.